Nokia E75

The latest Nokia E Series smartphone has dual keyboards and is the first mobile phone to come bundled with Nokia Messaging

The Nokia E75 is the first smartphone to include Nokia Messaging — a new e-mail user interface — and features a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard as well as a regular numeric keypad.

The Nokia E75 builds on the stylish design of the popular Nokia E71. It features a similar gloss metal finish, an etched rear casing and curved chrome edges, making it one of the most stylish smartphones we've reviewed. Build quality is excellent: the E75's metal and plastic casing makes it feel like a strong and sturdy handset that should be capable of taking a few knocks. The slider does slightly wiggle on the left side of the phone when in the closed position, though.

The Nokia E75's slide-out QWERTY keyboard is ideal for typing long e-mails or messages. Importantly, the E75's buttons are well spaced and among the largest we've seen on a smartphone. The amount of space means you'll need to spread your fingers across a larger area than you would when using many other smartphones, but the result is a more comfortable typing experience.

The Nokia E75 has a five-way navigation pad and the phone's shortcut keys — home, calendar, delete and mail — are a welcome addition. The calendar and mail keys can be assigned to a number of functions, and there is a customisable shortcut button on the right, along with external volume controls and a dedicated camera button. The display is crisp, clear and possesses good viewing angles. The orthodox shape of the Nokia E75 means the display has a much more familiar aspect ratio than the wider Nokia E71.

A key feature of the E75 is the included Nokia Messaging service, Nokia's e-mail application. The Nokia Messaging service allows up to 10 e-mail accounts to be used on a single device. Improvements over the previous Nokia e-mail client include folder and HTML e-mail support, expandable views and sorting capabilities. The look and feel has also been refreshed. Setting up a personal e-mail account, such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Windows Live mail, is a simple process of entering your username and password. We used a Yahoo! mail account for testing and were impressed that we instantly received our mail once the settings were entered.

For corporate accounts, the process is a slightly longer seven steps, but Nokia has put plenty of effort into making set up as simple as possible. For corporate accounts, the Nokia E75 can synchronise your contacts and calendar information as well as e-mail; the service supports Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes Traveller mail, with no extra licensing fees or other costs.

The Nokia E75 runs the popular Symbian S60 platform, so it can read and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents and access PDF files. The phone doesn't come pre-installed with any social networking applications, though we downloaded Windows Messenger and Facebook apps over-the-air through the download menu. The E75's interface isn't as visually appealing as many competing smartphones, but the grid layout of the main menu and the list format for most submenus make it easy enough to use.

A nice aspect of the Nokia E75 is its speed — even when running multiple applications, there is little lag or delay. When opening the slider, the screen orientation is also quick to rotate, and the same applies to the built-in accelerometer when the phone is tilted to a horizontal position. Another handy feature is the E75's ability to switch between business and personal modes. You can edit a number of settings in each mode, including enabled applications, notifications and themes and can then toggle between the two.

The Nokia E75 is HSDPA-capable, has Wi-Fi and built-in GPS and includes a 4GB microSD card. Nokia has included a suite of multimedia features — a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, a front-mounted VGA camera for video calls, an FM radio, and the A2DP Bluetooth profile are all present, while a standard 3.5mm headphone jack is a welcome inclusion.

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